


city of blinding lights

by talia_ae



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Adventure, M/M, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:15:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talia_ae/pseuds/talia_ae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reclusive Facebook Founder Goes Into the Wild.  Or at least, that's what Mark pictures the headlines to say.  A story about a reunion, the Fourth of July, the Le Pan Quotidien on 19th and Broadway, and driving all night across the state of Kansas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	city of blinding lights

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Small Fandom Bang :D

**zero. --- (palo alto, california, united states, july fourth)**  
  
According to Mark's eleventh-grade Advanced Placement United States history textbook, the Declaration of Independence was approved on July 4th, 1776. It was a day where the meaning would stretch across centuries.  
  
This is... mostly correct. Mark's eleventh-grade history teacher was a bit of a renegade, but he was a renegade with a Ph.D and once spent an entire class period on a rainy October day giving them all the background information they would ever need about the founding of their country. The colonies legally voted to separate themselves from Great Britain on July 2nd, not July 4th, and a majority of the signers of the Declaration actually waited to put pen to paper until August. John Adams, second president and father to the sixth, wrote to his wife Abigail on the 3rd that the 2nd would be the day celebrated and remembered.  
  
Mark has no idea why he remembers this from high school, but a Harvard art history class failed to teach him the difference between Michelangelo and Botticelli.  
  
It doesn't matter anyways. It's July 4th and the neighbors next door are grilling hot dogs and laughing. They have a sprinkler and he can hear their four-year-old girl screaming. Based on past experience, if he looks over the fence he’ll be able to see their six-year-old hitting her with a swimming noodle.  
  
Mark's Independence Day celebration involves a six-pack of beer , store-bought guacamole, and talking to Chris on Skype. Dustin took advantage of the long weekend to fly out to D.C., leaving Mark alone in Palo Alto.  
  
His neighbors invited him over to their barbecue but even he could sense that it was half-hearted, that they wanted to be with their family and not the morose twentysomething they occasionally invited over for drinks out of pity. He'd declined, said he wouldn't be around to babysit next weekend either, and went out to buy himself more beer.  
  
On his laptop screen Dustin waves, clearly happily tipsy. Chris is looking at him like _you're an idiot_ but it's a fond look, it's always a fond look with Dustin no matter his level of idiocy, and Mark suddenly misses them. A lot.  
  
(He misses someone else too, but he's not permitting himself that anymore.)  
  
He doesn’t have an explanation for what he does next. It’s longing mixed with wanderlust mixed with alcohol, and there are absolutely no excuses.  
  
“Dustin,” Mark says, “you know, would you mind if I took a vacation? You could take over for a while, right?”  
  
Thousands of miles away, Dustin blinks and his mouth goes slack, like this is some absurd thing coming out of Mark’s mouth and he’s in total shock. The lag on his internet connection makes it look stranger than it actually is, but that’s Dustin’s face for you.  
  
“Sure, Mark,” he says. “If you actually decide to take a vacation, if that _actually happens_ , I will take over for a week or two.”  
  
“Good,” Mark says, waves, and signs off.  
  
He packs a bag. He won’t need much. His laptop, cell phone, assorted chargers. Clean underwear, a few t-shirts and jeans. A pair of sneakers. Something to read along the way. A notebook. His wallet. A toothbrush and deodorant. It all fits into a small duffel bag, one he still has stashed in his closet from college.  
  
He gets in his car, turns on some music, and he begins to drive.  
  
Happy Fourth of July.  
  
 **one. --- (fortuna, california, united states, july fourth)**  
  
Fortuna, California is about six hours away from Palo Alto, accounting for traffic. It isn’t huge-- about ten thousand people-- and it’s low-lying and scrubby, a gateway to the giant redwoods in the northern part of the state.  
  
What was it that Horace Greeley had allegedly said during that heady time of expansion? “Go West, young man”. Mark followed Greeley’s advice already, years ago, and what had it gotten him? (He wishes the question was rhetorical-- money, yes, but he was left with mostly lawsuits and loneliness. ) He can’t go further west. He’ll hit the Pacific and then it’s miles and miles of ocean until Asia. It would be a monumental boat ride, and he doesn’t know how to sail.  
  
He wonders what it must have been like for those 1800-era travellers attempting manifest destiny, born in Ohio or Pennsylvania or Virginia, never seeing any sort of ocean-- and then when they arrived, confronted head-on with the majestic Pacific.  
  
It must have been some sight to see.  
  
Fortuna is north. Maybe Mark will go north until he hits the border, maybe he’ll go southeast and then north again, and it doesn’t matter where he ends up except he won’t be west, he won’t be where everything fucking _fell apart._  
  
Luckily, Fortuna also has a Super 8 motel, and it doesn’t matter that he could technically afford to buy a house here. They have Wi-Fi and hot water and really, that’s all he needs right now.  
  
He checks in and brings up his email. There’s one from Dustin: _oh shit mark you’re really serious about this vacation thing. ill fly back tomorrow._  
  
 _good_ , Mark emails back. He sends a blast email to other Facebook officers, and then he goes to sleep. In the morning he has a subpar bagel in the lobby of the motel, and asks the person behind the desk what there is to do in town.  
  
She’s twenty-something with curly black hair, and she’s checking Facebook on her iPhone. Mark feels a thrill when he sees it the way that he always does, the thrill of creation. Her name tag says _Daisy_.  
  
“There’s the Heather Garden,” she says. “It’s not that far away, and it’s usually pretty this time of year.”  
  
“Thanks, Daisy” Mark says, picking up his bag. “You’ve been very helpful.”  
  
She smiles, showing white teeth. “No problem, Mr.--”  
  
“Zuckerberg,” he says, “Mark. No Mr., really, it makes me feel weird. Have a nice day.”  
  
By the time she realizes who he is, looking down at the open window on her phone amazedly, Mark’s out the door.  
  
The heather garden is pretty, but it also makes him sneeze.  
  
 **two. --- (alturas, california, united states, july fifth)**  
  
There’s a huge amount of traffic and Mark doesn’t know why. He supposes it’s some sort of post-holiday exodus, that everyone’s gotten sick of their family and has gone home, stuffed full of hot dogs, apple pie, ice cream, and beer.  
  
He’s driving northeast on CA-36 and listening to nothing in particular, just the sounds of car horns and the hum of the engine. His windows are rolled down and there’s sunlight on his face.  
  
Mark lives in California and he still doesn’t get enough sun.  
  
He stops driving when he gets hungry, around six, at a casino restaurant outside of Alturas. He’s in the upper east corner of the state, the corner that ends at a right angle. The town says that they’re “where the West still lives”, but Mark’s not too sure about that.  
  
“I need a place to stay,” he tells his server at the Desert Rose Cafe, a woman who looks like the stereotype of every sort of truck stop waitress ever, except she smiles at him and doesn’t call him ‘hon’, and she brings him extra french fries, so maybe she’s something different and he’s not sure.  
  
“There’s a couple of motels when you go inside city limits,” she says. She’s not wearing a name tag, and Mark hasn’t asked. “Nothing fancy, but they’ll have a vacancy. We don’t get too many tourists ‘round here.”  
  
“I’m not a tourist,” Mark says quickly.  
  
“Then what’re you doing?” she asks.  
  
He bites his lip and says what’s closest to the truth: “not being at work.”  
  
She smiles, says, “must be nice, I’d love a vacation right about now” and brings him the check and a pen for him to sign with.  
  
“I guess,” Mark mutters, but there’s no one listening.  
  
When he wakes up late in the morning, he drives and drives and doesn’t stop for gas until he’s out of the state.  
  
 **three. --- (corvallis, oregon, united states, july fifth)**  
  
There’s a prevalent theme on this excursion so far, and it’s mostly that Californian traffic sucks no matter what part of the state he’s in.  
  
Of course, now Mark is in Oregon, has spent six out of the last nine hours in Oregon, but it’s clearly influenced by California and he’s becoming more fond of Boston’s T train than he was even when he used it somewhat regularly. He’ll have to donate money to some sort of green public transportation and infrastructure work; there need to be more of it out on the West Coast. Besides, he’s always enjoyed coding on trains, wired in with the landscape speeding by and the soothing whir of the wheels against the tracks.  
  
When he’d entered the city of Corvallis, he’d noticed a sign saying _Welcome to a Green Power Community_ , right on top of one saying _Bicycle-Friendly Community_ , which is kind of making him want to keep on driving straight through the night.  
  
But Chris had texted, had made Mark promise he would not drive for hours and hours and skip sleeping to try to find whatever (in Chris’s words) stupid idiotic thing he was looking for. He’d also made Mark promise that he would keep in contact with Dustin, wo might not have been as mentally prepared to be CEO-substitute as Mark had thought, and Mark needs Wi-Fi for that.There’s some coffee shop in the city that very proudly proclaims itself to be Not Starbucks, but they have free internet so Mark bites the bullet and buys a cup of tea, spoons in at least two tablespoons of sugar, and sits down with his laptop.  
  
Dustin pops up on Skype after about thirty seconds.  
  
“Hey,” his friend says. Dustin looks tired, and messy, and Mark’s pretty sure he has pizza sauce all over his shirt. “What’s up?”  
  
“I’m in Oregon,” Mark responds. “Not in Starbucks.”  
  
“That must be nice,” Dustin says. “So, uh, Mark.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Have you figured out why you’re doing this yet?” Dustin rubs at his face, smearing marinara in a bright red streak across his cheek.  
  
Mark shrugs.  
  
“We told the media-- those who care, so like, mostly obsessive tech blogs-- that you’re taking a vacation. Didn’t say where.”  
  
“Thanks,” Mark says. “Hey, Dustin?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“You can take some time off and take a shower, you know. There are lots of employees who can do... well. Who can do stuff.”  
  
“Do as I say, not as I do?” Dustin quips, smiling softly.  
  
“Something like that,” Mark agrees. “I’m gonna go find a hotel.”  
  
“Keep in touch,” Dustin says. Mark closes the computer. He’ll check into a hotel that’s exactly like the first three, with a fuzzy TV and slippery sheets, and it will all be perfectly adequate, except for the bagels.  
  
But now he’s in Oregon, and if it isn’t that much different from California, it certainly feels-- cleaner, perhaps. Clearer air. Unmarked.  
  
His phone buzzes with a text from Sean: _r u tryin to make some sort of grand gesture?_  
  
 _No,_ Mark thinks, except.  
  
It isn’t as if he doesn’t talk to Eduardo. He has his email address, though not his cell. They communicate, usually short messages like “you need to come to the next shareholders, important discussion about expansion overseas” or “my parents received your Hanukkah card, thank you for sending it”; always impersonal no matter the topic.  
  
So, yeah. He could talk to Eduardo if it was necessary. He could email him even if it wasn’t. He could email him and say _I never realized it, but I don’t like California that much. I like the ideas, but it is not my platonic ideal. It makes me tired, and all the history is new. I used to love it, I loved the energy, but now I’m surprisingly discontent. Oregon is better. Not much of an improvement-- go West, young man, as if I could go further without drowning-- and I’ve never been poetic, I almost failed my poetry class sophomore year of high school, but this isn’t what I’m looking for and I don’t even know what that is._  
  
He’s not going to send that. He’s not-- he’s not a idiot, and he’s not drunk enough for it to be an excuse, and maybe he shouldn’t be in Oregon after all.  
  
He’s not too tired; the sun is still up. He can keep going.  
  
 **four. --- (bellingham, washington, united states, 12:08 am, july sixth)**  
  
The only reason Mark has stopped in the city of Bellingham, Washington State, population 80,885, is because it’s the last place he’ll be able to check into a hotel after midnight unless he drives into Canada.  
  
He’s not going to drive into Canada. His passport is still safe at home on his bedroom dresser.  
  
Go West, go North, go anywhere. Go to sleep.  
  
He sleeps for eight hours, and when he wakes up he buys coffee and Red Bull and gets in his car, and drives for fifteen hours straight until he finds himself in Montana.  
  
 **five. --- (billings, montana, united states, july sixth)**  
  
Montana is sky and scrubby grass and a city of just over one hundred thousand people. Montana is big sky country, and when Mark looks up all he can see is navy blue darkness and stars.  
  
Big sky country. He likes the sound of that. He snaps a picture with his phone of the stars, the devastating, shocking _breadth_ of the sky, and sends it to Dustin.  
  
 _where are you_ , Dustin texts back almost immediately, and Mark says, _Montana._  
  
 _that’s pretty far away from home,_ Dustin responds, and even though Mark knows his friend can’t see it, he shrugs.  
  
 _it’s a start,_ he says to Dustin, and hopes that he’ll understand.  
  
He spends the rest of the night wandering around Billings. It’s cool outside, sixty degrees, and it’s the perfect weather for when you can’t sleep and you have nothing immediate to do. Mark parks his car and slings his laptop bag over his shoulder, hoping he won’t get arrested for vagrancy (and do they even do that anymore? Chris would know, but Chris is in D.C. and asleep). He slips on headphones, plays something quiet and classical, and hopes that he’ll be able to see the sunrise.  
  
The neighborhood he’s in is quiet. He turns onto Cascade Drive, notes the low houses and bluffs, dark in the moonlight.  
  
At 5 AM, when the sky is becoming the color of faded ink, his phone buzzes against his hip.  
  
It’s Eduardo.  
  
Mark picks it up and weighs it in his hand. The phone fits there well, buzzing against his palm, each vibration giving him-- something. A chance, perhaps. A suggestion. Eduardo hasn’t changed his phone number. But more than that, Eduardo _kept_ Mark’s number.  
  
He hits a button and says, “hello.”  
  
“Mark,” says Eduardo’s voice. “Hi, Mark.”  
  
“Hey,” Mark responds, sinking down onto a bench. “Eduardo. Hi.” He pauses. “Are you-- where are you, isn’t it, like, dinner time in Singapore right now?”  
  
Eduardo laughs a little bit. It sounds embarrassed. “No, it’s morning, it’s eight AM, I’m in New York. Manhattan, actually. At a Starbucks on Fifth Avenue.”  
  
“There are a lot of Starbucks on Fifth Avenue,” Mark feels obliged to point out.  
  
“Yeah,” Eduardo says. “So, look, this is just-- I haven’t spoken to you in forever, I know, especially not in person.”  
  
“Justifiably,” Mark says, and winces. Eduardo exhales.  
  
“Well-- let’s not-- okay, look, Mark, just. It’s-- Where are you?”  
  
“Montana,” says Mark, rolling the word around in his mouth. “I’m in Montana.”  
  
“ _Montana_ ,” Eduardo says, like that is the very last thing he’d expect Mark to say, and then, “big sky country?”  
  
“Yeah, Wardo, it’s amazing.” Mark shifts a little, left foot to right. “The sky in Boston, or even in California, it was _nothing_ compared to this. There are stars. It’s so cool, you know, that there are all these stars.”  
  
“Okay,” says Eduardo, and Mark can hear him take a deep breath, and then there’s a soft click as he hangs up the phone. But it’s not angry like the last time they tried to talk, and it’s not stilted and overly polite. He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s not bad. Mark wonders if Dustin or Chris asked Eduardo to call, if the shock of it would make him spill something about this journey of his, or even if Eduardo would just make him realize something, the way that Eduardo always used to (or always tried to, because sometimes Mark was Mark and it didn’t work).  
  
It won’t solve anything, but maybe it’s time for him to have breakfast. It’s fast becoming dawn, with a grey-pink sky and that haziness special to the hour between five and six. Mark sits for a while and watches the sky lighten and turn blue until he’s reasonably sure he can find a restaurant.  
  
He ends up with pancakes drenched in butter and syrup. They’re sticky-sweet in his mouth, and they’re pretty good.  
  
-  
  
He does actually need to work, even if it’s just to send Dustin instructions and plot out ideas for the next update. There’s a script he doesn’t like on the homepage, too, so he’ll need to deal with that even though it’s hardly important; it’s just something that would otherwise nag at him.  
  
Then again, he has the time right now, which is awesome in and of itself. Mark dumps maple syrup over everything, even his eggs, says a quick prayer to the god of laptops, keyboards, and sticky fingers, and digs in.  
  
He finishes working around nine, and then he has the whole day ahead of him.  
  
He could find another project, he’s sure, fix another line of code and another until he’s changed the entire site incrementally, but in essence this is supposed to be a vacation and Chris might yell at him even more if he doesn’t use it effectively.  
  
Mark’s pretty sure wandering around Billings at dawn counts as a nature walk. Everyone, including his mother, is always encouraging him to get more fresh air.  
  
-  
  
Dustin calls around one. He wants to know how Montana is.  
  
“Fine,” Mark says, and maybe he sounds a little bit cross. “It’s fine.”  
  
“Where’s your sense of wonder,” Dustin asks, a touch rhetorical. “Where’s the Montana-loving Mark I met for the first time yesterday?”  
  
“I’m tired of walking,” Mark informs him. “It’s boring. My feet hurt. My laptop is heavy.”  
  
“Leave your laptop in the car,” Dustin suggests.  
  
“If it gets stolen, I’ll have to hire a hitman,” Mark says.  
  
There’s a pause.  
  
“I would laugh,” says Dustin slowly, “but I’m not entirely sure that you’re kidding.”  
  
“You’ll never know,” Mark says, using the fakest, most faux-mysterious voice he can muster up. Given how he’s more than a bit sleep-deprived, he ends up more croaky than villainous.  
  
Granted, this is how a lot of his and Dustin’s conversations go, one of them so high on sleep deprivation and the other hopped up on caffeine and pure hyperactivity-- the roles stay pretty constant, never quite switching-- so Mark isn’t sure why he’s even questioning anything right now. Except, apparently, that Dustin thinks he is capable of hiring a hitman.  
  
“I am not hiring a hitman,” Mark says after a moment, rather monotonously. “This is reassurance for your peace of mind.”  
  
“I’m _very_ reassured,” Dustin says calmly. “So you’re definitely not still in a Montana-inspired state of shock and awe?”  
  
Mark frowns. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I might have to sleep on it. I’ve been awake for-- a while.”  
  
“Scared to give me a real number?” Dustin’s grin can be heard through the phone; his tone of voice is light, teasing, almost motherly, and _that_ is something Mark will never share with anyone else ever.  
  
“Well you’d just tell Chris, and we both who know is more terrifying, between the two of you.”  
  
“Uh-huh.” There’s a crunch as Dustin bites into something, presumably a pretzel. “You should go to sleep soon. And don’t drive all night, either.”  
  
“I fear I’m becoming predictable,” Mark says, and thinks about hanging up. He doesn’t need to say goodbye, Dustin knows him well enough to know that it’s not always necessary.  
  
“Wait a sec,” Dustin says, as Mark is pulling the phone away from his ear. “Which way are you driving?”  
  
“Probably not west?” Mark says, wincing as it comes out as so much more of a question than it is ought to. “I don’t know. Maybe south, a little. Colorado, New Mexico, I’m not sure.”  
  
“Not over to the East Coast?” Dustin’s voice is gentle, too gentle, and Mark gnaws on his lip.  
  
“The continental United States is a very big place, Dustin,” he says instead, “and even I haven’t seen most of it.”  
  
“We’re not gonna do this now, that’s fine, there’s time,” Dustin says. “Take care of yourself, Marky, don’t do anything stupid, okay?”  
  
“Fine,” Mark grumbles, and he is halfway through mumbling about how it is ridiculous to make a fully grown and legal adult promise that when Dustin laughs softly and hangs up.  
  
-  
  
Mark spends another day in Montana, and he spends most of that day asleep. Dustin’s advice has proven to be decent, and it seems like Dustin had communicated with Chris, who actually has his mother on speed-dial, and he got a text-- several-- telling him in no uncertain terms that he needed to sleep at least nine hours, soon.  
  
(He’s fairly sure that it was Eduardo, one Thanksgiving he spent at Mark’s house instead of his own, who taught Mrs. Zuckerberg how to text. Of all the things he’s still mad at Eduardo for, this is probably the most unforgivable.)  
  
Anyways. It’s nothing against Montana, really. He still feels that same odd bit of shock and amazement when he looks up at the sky and just sees sky, blue and endless and overpowering. It’s not like the sky in Boston, gray and cramped, and it’s different even from the sky in Palo Alto. And Billings is _fine_. He rented a room in a non-chain hotel, and apart from having a slightly better television it’s exactly the same as the chain motels, which was more disappointing than he’d care to admit.  
  
Mark just feels _itchy_.  
  
It’s an itch he can’t scratch, really. It’s something driving him away from Facebook and out into the open, yes, but it’s driving him out into isolation.  
  
It’s not-- he doesn’t spend a lot of time with other people, that’s the thing. His social circle is mostly Dustin and Chris, with the occasional call from Billy Olsen when he’s drunk and nostalgic. The occasional Facebook poke from Erica Albright, because while they’re not friends they’re not _not_ friends, they just have moved past stupid college shit as best they can. And if they express that by poking, then that’s just fine. They got coffee once when she was in San Francisco for work, and he had a very nice, very platonic time. His mom calls. His mom calls kind of a lot, actually, but also in a way that Mark doesn’t mind it happening.  
  
And then there’s Eduardo, hovering around the edges of his consciousness. Mark would liken him to a ghost, but he is most definitely alive, and Mark wouldn’t allow himself to be haunted, anyway.  
  
So it’s not a loneliness thing, or an isolation thing. It’s curious, how he likes this sort of traveling that’s just him. The sort of travelling that doesn’t involve conferences and speeches and wearing neckties, then schmoozing with people who use too much hair product and speak too loudly and never seem to fit into their obviously designer-brand suits. Mark hates those people.  
  
(Eduardo is not one of them, not yet. Mark knows to be grateful for the little things. He’s meet Saverin Sr., who was the most literal example of a dick Mark can think of.)  
  
And in the end, right now, half awake in a strange room in a strange city in a strange state, Mark is fairly content.  
  
But he’s not _happy._  
  
And isn’t that important? He’s got an itch.  
  
  
-  
  
He checks out of the hotel. If he’s going to try to find something, he’s got to keep moving. He can’t exist in a state of a inertia.  
  
 _Move fast and break things._  
  
“Where should I go next?” Mark asks the girl behind the hotel desk. She’s youngish, probably late twenties, probably with a heritage that is dominantly Italian. Her lipstick is neat and red and looks like it is never allowed to smudge, and she has on what appears to be industrial-strength mascara. Her name tag says _Toni_.  
  
“I’ve always wanted to go to California,” she says after a moment’s consideration.  
  
 _Go West, young man._  
  
“I’m from there,” Mark says, offering up a crooked smile. Crooked because that is the barest of half-truths; he is so much more from Dobbs Ferry and Boston then Palo Alto; history hasn’t left enough of a mark yet to tell.  
  
Also, he remains stubbornly pasty in a year where even Dustin has a slight tan.  
  
“Well then,” Toni says, stretching out her vowels. “Go south.”  
  
“South? Like the Deep South, like New Orleans?”  
  
“Not unless you like gumbo,” she replies. Her voice is sharp and has a rough edge to it. “I’m talking southwest. Boulder is so unlike anything I’d ever seen before. You look like you travel more than me-- it’s only the serious travellers who carry just a duffel-- but I’d bet good money you would enjoy the southwest.”  
  
Mark would ask her for driving directions, but honestly, he’ll just use his phone and his GPS.  
  
He likes being thought of as a traveller; a distant wanderer. It’s far from the truth, ludicrously so, but he clings to the label.  
  
“Thank you very much,” he says instead. She’s small and neat in her black jacket and pencil skirt, and he wonders how much time she spends in the morning, taking pride in her appearance. “You’ve been very helpful.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” Toni says, and her answering smile is a bright slash of red across her skin.  
  
-  
  
Without really thinking about it, he taps out a text to Eduardo.  
  
 _I think I might go to Colorado next._  
  
Eduardo doesn’t respond for a few hours, but then again, Mark doesn’t expect him to. When the phone buzzes, he looks up from his laptop. He’s sitting on a bench, clicking idly through Google Maps, a tab open with driving directions to Boulder.  
  
 _I’ve heard it’s a nice state,_ Eduardo writes. Mark takes it as implicit approval.  
  
 _Boulder’s supposed to be pretty cool_ , he writes. There isn’t a second response, even though he waits an additional twenty minutes. It’s fine. Mark closes his laptop and slips it into his shoulder bag. Now all he has to do is remember where he parked his car.  
  
Which, of course, takes much longer than expected. He ends up going in three separate circles, walking by low-slung houses and cafes and bookstores and at least one sex shop, which he definitely would not have expected to find in Billings. When he finally stumbles across the car-- entirely by accident, and Mark will admit it-- he’s probably never been so glad to see an automobile in his life.  
  
Mark doesn’t have a fancy car. He could afford one, sure. He could afford a fleet of limos and still have enough for, like, a diamond-encrusted Rolls Royce. But he has a Saturn. It’s blue, and the only conceit he’s allowed it is a Facebook sticker in the back window. It’s a few years old, too-- the floor mats are kind of beat up, and there’s crumbs in the seams on almost all the seats because Dustin flouts every single ‘food is only allowed in the car if you eat neatly’ rule ever made. Mark can’t get rid of the ketchup stain at all, and he’s scrubbed at it with ridiculously potent cleaning supplies. Now there’s a ketchup stain and a bleach spot.  
  
But yeah, he’s fond of this car. He’s driven a lot in this car recently. And he’s set up a decent charging station as well, which, geek-pride is still a thing, everybody.  
  
He also, in his head, calls his English-accented GPS Giles, which Dustin, supreme Buffy fan (as in, has dragged Mark to more than one fan convention before Chris forbade them going in anything other than disguise) will never, ever be allowed to know.  
  
According to his GPS, it’ll take him about 9 hours to drive to Colorado, and said driving will be mostly through Wyoming. All that Mark knows about Wyoming is that Dick Cheney is from there, and so he’s sort of developed a natural suspicion about the state.  
  
If he starts now, he might make it by morning.  
  
 **six. --- (boulder, colorado, united states, july eighth)**  
  
There’s a part of Mark, eyes and head fuzzy from almost ten hours of driving on flat, brown interstate highways, that can’t believe it’s only been four days. 96 hours. He’s been away from Facebook for 96 hours. It seems so insignificant, in the scheme of things.  
  
It’s certainly a way to see a country, out the window of a car.  
  
He’d watched as the landscape went from scrubby desert to a richer green, as he’d gone down through Wyoming and into Colorado. He’s been to Colorado before, when he was fourteen and his parents, as a Hanukkah treat, took them all skiing. He mostly remembers twisting his ankle and sitting in the ski lounge, trying to get onto the internet and drinking endless cups of hot chocolate with whipped cream, while his sisters would come in at intervals, cheeks flushed and happy, and would sit and steal french fries from him.  
  
Mark tries to think of what’s in Colorado. He remembers Dustin saying it was a beautiful state-- Dustin, being from Florida and no stranger to humidity, had appreciated the cleaner air. As for Mark himself, well, he hadn’t minded the ski lounge, despite the overarching use of logs and snowshoes as interior design.  
  
The sun has been up for a while. He’d watched the sunrise around the time he’d crossed the border. The thing about sunrises, Mark decided in college, is that once you’ve seen a lot of them (and he’s seen a lot, that’s what happens when you’re a CS student and you stay up all night coding, taking a ten minute break to drink Red Bull and watch the sun rise over Cambridge because holy shit, there’s class in like three hours.) He hadn’t been at his desk then, that’s right, he’d been sitting next to Wardo. Eduardo had closed his textbook, made Mark save his work, and they’d watched the sun come up over the buildings spread in front of them.  
  
“We could go and watch this from the roof,” Eduardo had suggested, but Mark had disagreed-- that would involve climbing, and fire exits, and also it was March and _so cold_ and he didn’t want to put on real shoes.  
  
“Okay,” Eduardo had said then, simply, “we’ll stay right here”. They had watched in from Mark’s bed, Eduardo’s arm around him and his head on his shoulder. The spine of the textbook had been digging into Mark’s back, but he hadn’t said anything.  
  
He’s pretty sure nothing could have topped that sunrise.  
  
Eyes tight (which is so _stupid_ , he doesn’t know why that’s happening, that shouldn’t be happening), he drives on in search of a hotel. Somewhere, he knows that Chris is probably living in gut-wrenching fear of a headline saying something like ‘ _Sleep-deprived Facebook billionaire crashes into campus Apple store_ ’.  
  
Mark gets a room at the first place he sees, and sleeps through most of the day. His last thought is that he seems to be turning nocturnal. Not the best thing, certainly.  
  
Dustin sends him a text about then: _good night marky! hope you’ve arrived safely. are you a bat now?_  
  
He manages to text back that he does not eat bugs, thank you very much, nor does he have echolocation, and then he falls asleep on top of the covers, shoes and all.  
  
When he wakes up, it’s time for dinner.  
  
-  
  
The thing is, objectively Mark likes Colorado, or at least he doesn’t mind it. But there isn’t something he needs here. Boulder is fine. He walked around the UC-Boulder campus after dinner, watched students carrying laptops and textbooks and messenger bags, counted all the silly hats and patterned socks he could see. It’s nice. It’s _collegey_. It’s soothingly familiar.  
  
On the other hand.  
  
There’s a pull behind his navel, a voice whispering in his ear, and it’s saying _go East._  
  
So maybe it’s time for Mark to succumb.  
  
He reasons around it. He’ll go southeast first, maybe. He’ll start by driving down to Louisiana, or Kentucky. Maybe he’ll go to Nashville, even though he has absolutely no interest either way in country music.  
  
Because he knows, even if he doesn’t want to admit it, that he’ll probably end up back in Massachusetts. He’ll probably go by the Harvard campus. He might even go by Kirkland, and Widener, and the CS labs, and he find the statue of not-John Harvard and rub its toe for luck and nostalgia. (He never believed in that shit, but Eduardo did, and made them both do it every time. Except now apparently people are peeing on it, he’d heard, so maybe he’ll skip that step because wow would that be awfully unhygenic). Just to see if anything has changed. Just to see if it makes him feel anything. Just to see.

 

**seven. --- (monroe, louisiana, july tenth)**  
  
  
Okay, so. Northern Louisiana? Might have been a mistake.  
  
Mark had known he wanted to avoid New Orleans, nothing against the city personally, but when he thinks of New Orleans he thinks of color and noise and cheer, a city that has so much character it’s spilling out of every crack and crevice.  
  
And like he’d said in Montana, he doesn’t like gumbo. He likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and his nana’s latkes.  
  
Yeah. He’s sure there’s a rich history, and probably not too many vampires (oh god Dustin’s obsession with _True Blood_ will probably never go away--) but this is making him itch more.  
  
He’d thought it would be less. He’s more east, isn’t he?  
  
 _Not really,_ whispers the niggling voice inside of him, the one Mark always so conveniently ignores. _Stop playing with technicalities._  
  
“Fuck off,” he says out loud, to the steering wheel of his car, and thumps the dashboard. And then after a moment, Mark laughs. He’s just told himself to fuck off. Priorities, man, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t even have those anymore.  
  
This is ridiculous, he tells himself. He’s just driven 18 hours straight down I-70, flagrantly defying requests like _don’t do anything stupid_ and _don’t forget to sleep_. He could have stopped in Kansas, in Wichita, gotten another anonymous hotel room so he wasn’t staring at pavement and headlights.  
  
Kansas is really big. It’s really fucking big. You drive and drive and all that you see in front of you is more Kansas. _Poor Dorothy_ , Mark thinks, and laughs hysterically. _Poor Toto._  
  
He pretty much passes out after that.  
  
-  
  
Mark’s phone rings in the early morning when he’s in the middle of a dream that seems to be mostly memory.  
  
He rolls over and gropes for the device. Eduardo Saverin, it says, and 4:47 AM, which is absurdly early. His head feels stuffed full of cotton wool. He hits the button and answers it.  
  
“Wardo? It’s still dark out.”  
  
“Mark, _where are you._ ” Eduardo’s voice is worried, concern threading through it in a way Mark hasn’t heard since he was sick the end of freshman year and Eduardo spent two days making sure he ate soup and stayed hydrated after he threw up seven times in four hours. “Mark, seriously, everyone is really worried, I’ve been getting texts from Dustin and Chris for hours-- are you still in Colorado?”  
  
“Nnnn.” His mouth is sticky. “I don’t know where I am.”  
  
“You don’t _know_ \--”  
  
“No, no, I do, it’s okay, ‘m just asleep. I’m in Monroe.”  
  
“Monroe?” Eduardo sounds a little relieved, now that he’s, like, ensured that Mark hasn’t been kidnapped or whatever for his billion dollars and his lame car. “Monroe what, Mark. Where.”  
  
“Louisiana,” Mark says thickly. “I was gonna stop in Kansas, but then I thought I would never get out of Kansas so I kept driving. Did you know how much of Kansas there is? I guess it makes sense that Dorothy wanted to go to Oz.”  
  
“Mark, that’s like a twenty hour drive, you idiot.”  
  
Mark yawns. “I guess. It seemed like less when I was actually doing it.”  
  
“I was worried,” Eduardo says quietly. “You-- you dropped off the map, I was worried.”  
  
“It’s okay,” Mark says. He shifts, curls into his pillow. The mattress crackles below him. “Go back to sleep, Wardo, s’okay. I’m okay.”  
  
Eduardo exhales on the other side of the line, then there’s a soft click. Mark pictures him, pictures him in his Harvard sweatshirt and jeans soft from washing, until he falls back asleep. He’ll call Dustin and Chris in the morning.  
  
-  
  
Chris calls him at a much more reasonable hour.  
  
“Sorry for freaking you guys out, okay,” says Mark pre-emptively. “I will be more considerate next time.”  
  
Chris sighs, and then laughs. “Mark,” he says fondly. “You’re so-- you. Sometimes I forget.”  
  
“Okay,” Mark says. “Yes. I am. I’m going to go get lunch now.”  
  
“Go for it,” says Chris. “Enjoy yourself.”  
  
“Yeah,” says Mark. He looks at the phone in his hand for a moment. “Hey, Chris, you know what? Eduardo was worried about me.”  
  
Chris pauses. “Is that a good thing?”  
  
“Could be,” Mark says. “Or maybe not. I don’t know.”  
  
“Okay,” says Chris. “You think about it.” He hangs up.  
  
Mark still wants to get the hell out of Louisiana.  
  
 _North,_ he thinks, and begins to head up toward Nashville.  
  
 **eight --- (lancaster, kentucky, july twelfth)**  
  
There’s something surprisingly comfortable about Kentucky. Mark thinks it probably has to do with thoughts of drinking bourbon in college and coding, or with memories reading Hunter S. Thompson when he was a teenager and his laptop overheated.  
  
It might be comfortable, but it also rains the entire time he’s in the state.  
  
Technically he’s in the South, but it isn’t the Deep South, it isn’t romanticized or strictly not romanticized, whichever reality the tourist picks.  
  
There isn’t much in the town, but he gets a decent slice of pizza at a place called Hamilton Avenue Pizza, which is in a one-storey house that has a porch with a rocking chair on it, and Mark appreciates that after endless rounds of California Pizza Kitchen, he really does. He sits on the covered porch and scarfs it down with a cup of sweet tea.  
  
This is really just another reminder that Dustin needs to learn how to cook if he’s going to keep spending almost every fucking night he’s not on a doomed date over at Mark’s place despite having his own house with food and a pool and a ridiculous Jacuzzi bath thing.  
  
The people he encounters are friendly. They smile, but it’s pretty clear that they don’t know who he is. Which is-- it’s nice. At Harvard Mark had had infamy, now he’s famous, kind of famous, whatever. Here he’s just another Yankee tourist passing through.  
  
Mark’s hand goes automatically to his pocket so he can text Eduardo that, but maybe not.  
  
 _What the hell, you’d like New York for that too. I know you didn’t like the city when we went for a weekend in college, but no one cares who you are in New York._  
  
Another one buzzes through. _Unless you’re Derek Jeter. Maybe._  
  
Mark laughs, sends a smiley face (ugh, when did he become the sort of person who sends emoticons in text, why is he a twelve year old girl) and tucks his phone back into his front pocket.  
  
He’s definitely going to keep going north. But maybe he’ll come back here sometime.  
 **  
nine --- (erie, pennsylvania, july fourteenth)**  
  
“How long were you driving for this time?” Mark can picture Dustin, splayed over his couch with the TV and his laptop both on, phone cradled between neck and shoulder. “Cause Mark, you promised us you wouldn’t drive for hours and do stupid shit, and I gotta say I don’t have a lot of faith in that right now. Not that I don’t have faith in you-- I totally do when it comes to computers and getting that weird projector in Conference Room C to work, but I don’t have faith when it comes to you sleeping and eating like a normal person, and also when it comes to you not scaring reporters who are well-intentioned, even when they are asking about your love life.”  
  
“It was eight hours,” Mark says crossly. His current motel room has eye-searing wallpaper and the springs on the bed are stabbing into his spine, but he’s here and he’s too lazy to move, also, Dustin’s voice and tendency to speak in paragraphs are becoming grating fairly quickly. “I’m not a total idiot.”  
  
“No, just like, seventy percent,” Dustin responds. “Wait, so where are you now?”  
  
Mark stretches. “Um. Somewhere in Pennsylvania.”  
  
“You don’t _know where you are?_ Why the fuck did you even spend money on a GPS then? Are you going to hike the Appalachain Trail next and live off the land eating twigs and blueberries and shit, and then write a blog about it? _Reclusive Facebook Founder Goes Into the Wild_?”  
  
“No, I do, give me a second. It’s Pennsylvania, I’m in Erie, Pennsylvania. By Lake Erie.”  
  
“You know, I could have guessed that one,” Dustin says. “So what’s it like being near a great lake?”  
  
“It’s really _big_ ,” Mark says, and they both laugh because shit, it’s obvious, but it’s also fucking funny.  
  
“That’s why they call it a _great_ lake.” Dustin is chortling, full belly laughs making their way down the phone line. “I kinda feel like I’m missing an opportunity for sexual innuendos here, Mark, I got to say.”  
  
“Nothing off the top of my head,” Mark responds. “It’s disappointing. I’m losing my touch.”  
  
“Maybe we’re getting mature,” Dustin says mock-seriously. “Anyways. On that note, this is your obligatory repetitive warning to not get into any car crashes from falling asleep at the wheel because Chris will kick your ass and he’ll do it more effectively than I will. Seriously Mark, he’s been working out.”  
  
“Fuck you, I’m a perfectly good driver, also who says I haven’t been going to the gym too?” Mark says automatically, though the last part is a lie and both of them know it-- Facebook: created and initially populated by skinny nerds-- and he hangs up the phone.  
  
He remembers when it was Eduardo who would hover, telling Mark not to stay up all night and code. Now that seems to have been replaced by a tag-team of Dustin and Chris combining mother hen behavior they probably learned off Wikipeda and late-night sitcoms reruns plus years of knowing Mark into one fucking dangerous combination.  
  
Also, Mark is one of those people who both appreciates and hates being looked after, so yeah. This new situation swings constantly between somewhat appreciated and really pathetic.  
  
Lake Erie is pretty cool, but once you look at it for a while, it’s a lot of placid water with no horizon in sight. There isn’t much to do anymore.  
  
 _Where should I go next?_  
  
And it’s Eduardo who answers, a text while Mark is eating surprisingly decent kung pao chicken and drinking his third Coke at a Chinese place he picked because it was closest to the motel: _you should come here._  
 _Here_ is New York, loud and noisy and sticky-hot with July heat, a crush of tourists and locals and dogs and kids, parks full of people and sprinklers and farmers’ markets, subways crowded and smelling like disgusting soup, air thick and sun reflecting off sidewalks, making his spine prickle. _Here_ is seeing Eduardo face to face with no buffer. _Here_ is public transportation and losing the comfort of his Saturn and his GPS’s tinny, accented, Giles-y voice.  
  
 _Here_ is also an invitation.  
  
 _Where should I stay?_ Mark responds, after a moment’s consideration. He knows what he’s expecting-- _it’s a big city, there’s lots of hotels to choose from_ \-- but instead Eduardo says : _stay with me._  
  
 _Okay_ , Mark taps out, fingers trembling. He did not expect this when he woke up in the morning, and it’s terrifying and a blessing all at once. _Thank you._  
  
 _I’ll see you in the morning,_ Eduardo responds.  
  
Well.  
  
He’s fine with driving all night anyways. It’s just another eight hours and there’s coffee and no traffic, Mark says to the Dustin-voice at the back of his head, so fuck you very much, I’ll be fine.  
  
 **ten. --- (new york, new york, united states, july fifteenth)**  
  
They meet in Midtown.  
  
They meet by Rockefeller Center and there’s no ice because it’s the middle of July, but Mark remembers what it was like in winter with the ice skaters and Eduardo with flushed cheeks clutching a cup of hot chocolate, watching people speed around in circles and he was wearing a Harvard scarf and a big down jacket, had said how there never was winter like this in Miami and it was his first real winter, it was still a fantastic novelty. Mark remembers that as July presses down on him, and Eduardo buys them both soft-serve ice cream from a Mr. Softee truck like the mature adult he is, and they find a quiet corner amidst the bustle, a set of stairs, an open public park to sit and talk and--  
  
No.  
  
They meet at the Le Pain Quotidien on 19th and Broadway, all the tables outside are full, and their waitress is blonde. It took Mark thirty minutes to find a parking spot, and the first thing that Eduardo says to him is, “I can’t believe you drive a Saturn.”  
  
Mark says, “my mom was afraid I would crash a Lamborghini,” which is true, and Eduardo laughs.  
  
He’s wearing jeans and a navy blue polo shirt, and Mark thinks that he must be roasting slowly because Mark is in old cargo shorts and, in his head, swiftly calculating the chances of heatstroke. The elastic around his hips is also shot; the waistband is going and he’s in a Harvard t-shirt that might belong to Dustin because it’s a little too big in the shoulders, and his feet are sweaty in his sandals.  
  
“Would you like a menu?” the waitress asks, grabbing the check from the loud group beside them. Mark thinks really hard about how much he hates communal tables and how apparently all of Manhattan’s got a sudden craving for mint lemonade and chocolate croissants.  
  
She’s going through the specials, which he tuned out after the mention of chilled zucchini soup, and it’s like--  
  
“you’re _here,_ ” Eduardo says, and Mark raises his eyebrows and shrugs and yeah, he is.  
  
“Two iced teas and I guess the bread basket,” he tells the waitress, who bustles off, snagging the menus, and Mark is sitting in a French-ish cafe literally inches away from Eduardo Saverin because communal tables are designed to make things awkward, and they are going to have a conversation.  
  
“So I guess Facebook hasn’t exploded since you’ve been away, huh,” Eduardo says, and while it’s definitely tinged with _something,_ Mark laughs.  
  
“Yeah, but if the entire front page is replaced by an embedded Youtube video of a cat walking on a piano, we know who to blame,” he says in response. Eduardo smiles and leans forward on his elbows.  
  
“Dustin’s sense of humor has only matured, I see,” he says.  
  
“It’s Dustin,” Mark says fondly. “Dick jokes, lolcats, and mother hen behavior are kind of his thing.”  
  
“Not the mother hen behavior,” Eduardo says, and his eyebrows kind of twitch. “That’s new.”  
  
“Maybe,” Mark bites his lip. Dustin being almost an Eduardo-substitute has become so familiar since the lawsuit, since it became so obvious that Sean wasn’t up to the job and Chris was going to eventually leave them both behind for a greater cause. “Though it’s upsetting that my friends all think I need a keeper, but, I guess he was, you know, sort of--”  
  
“You can say taking over for me,” Eduardo says. “I can connect the dots.”  
  
Mark shifts in his seat, crossing his legs. “Yeah. A little. I know.”  
  
(They meet in Soho amidst a crush of summer tourists on the Sex and the City tour eating cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery and Mark complains about how sweet the frosting is and Eduardo just laughs and drags him into the bakery to prove that they’re still good, it’s not a problem, and when he gets a smear of purple buttercream on his upper lip for a moment it looks like Eduardo wants to lick it off--  
  
no.  
  
They are in a cafe on 19th Street and there is a toddler who is crying and Mark is taking a sip of lukewarm tap water because he can’t think of anything to say.)  
  
Eduardo takes a sip of water too, and Mark kind of can’t stop looking at his lips. But he’s not gonna say that out loud, he can’t, so instead he says, “I was really glad when you called me when I was in Montana.” And through some freak miracle that must have been the right thing to say because Eduardo’s eyebrow goes up and he sets his glass down, says, “yes?” and Mark nods a little frantically.  
  
“I mean it was confusing. That you called. But I liked it.”  
  
“Mark--”  
  
“I don’t know if you felt guilty or if you were obligated or whatever but I was really glad, even if that’s a completely idiotic thing to be happy about--”  
  
“Mark.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I called because I missed you.” Eduardo takes a sip of water, his movements controlled, deliberate. His voice is measured and deliberate too. “You fucker.”  
  
The thing about sitting next to each other is that now their knees are practically touching, and Mark doesn’t know what exactly to do with that, and the tone of Eduardo’s voice is fond, or fondly exasperated, and he’s still thinking about Eduardo’s lips and how this is not the time to be thinking about Eduardo’s lips.  
  
“Here’s your tea,” the waitress says, suddenly reappearing. Mark’s past ten days have been filled with waitresses, and advice from waitresses, and while it’s mostly been solicited, he is also very glad that this one just whisks away to tend to her other tables.  
  
“I’m a fucker?” he asks through dry lips, taking a sip of tea for fortification, and Eduardo’s eyes are dark and full of intent.  
  
“Yes,” Eduardo says. “You goddamned are. And you’re a confusing, tricky bastard too, and you go from being a good friend to an utterly terrible one, and once, Mark, once upon a time on the 4th of July you took off and spent more than ten days driving yourself across the country on what I can only figure is a criminally stupid amount of sleep. You didn’t go to New Orleans, you went to Monroe. You didn’t stop to rest through the _entire state of Kansas_. And because I am just as insane as you are, I _missed_ you.”  
  
“Me too,” Mark agrees, because what else can he do? But more than that, what else does he want to do? “God, Wardo, I thought I would get used to you not being there, except I never did.”  
  
“A couple of days ago, Chris told me that he always thought you and I were a textbook case of codependency,” Eduardo says wryly, a smile quirking around his lips.  
  
“Like he and Dustin were any better sometimes,” and reminiscing about college should be awkward, but instead it’s just soft nostalgia, the good kind, that kind that makes both of them smile.  
  
“Yeah. Okay.” Eduardo smiles. “Are we going to order food besides bread and jam?”  
  
Mark shrugs. “We should, I guess. It would be rude not to.”  
  
Eduardo orders a salad. Mark gets two pastries, and Eduardo shakes his head.  
  
“You don’t have to say anything,” Mark says. “I’m hungry.”  
  
“Okay,” Eduardo says. His head snaps up, suddenly, and he looks Mark dead in the eye. “Mark.”  
  
“You look super intense right now, is this a thing?”  
  
“I don’t want to do this here.”  
  
Mark could say ‘what’, he could just question Eduardo and press him, but-- “okay. We won’t.”  
  
“It’s not-- it’s too crowded.”  
  
“It’s anonymous, like you said.” Mark feels obligated to point that out. “It should be okay.”  
  
“Some things don’t need to be out where everyone can see them,” Eduardo says dryly. “We can go back to my place later. I have some things I need to say.”  
  
Mark glances down at his hands, wrapped around the glass, clenched. “That’s fair,” he says. “That’s good. We should do that.”  
  
Eduardo nods. He is still so measured.  
  
-  
  
Eduardo’s apartment is probably large for New York but it would be small for anywhere else, with a worn leather couch and nice hardwood floors. There’s only one bedroom, small, but it has a walk-in closet and Eduardo doesn’t mind because there’s a walk-in closet. It’s well-lit and looks out over the back of the block, so he can have a modicum of privacy and quiet.  
  
Mark isn’t thirsty, but he still takes some water when Eduardo offers. He’s perched on the end of one of the dining room chairs, and Eduardo is-- there’s no other word for it, really-- Eduardo is hovering.  
  
He sits, finally, pulls out one of the other chairs and sinks into it, and Mark speaks up.  
  
“I want to know what I’m doing here.” It could be taken as rude, and it is, on its own merits, but Eduardo looks at him and apparently understands that it’s just a statement, because he sighs.  
  
“To be honest, I don’t know why,” he says.  
  
“I like your apartment,” Mark offers up in lieu of anything else. Wardo’s answering smile is an afterthought. He still looks conflicted. “Hey. Wardo--”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” Mark continues. “We can just, I don’t know, sit quietly or something.” And hey, Mark thinks the world would be awesome if everyone just took some time out of their day to sit quietly and stare at the floor. There would probably be less conflict.  
  
Eduardo laughs. “We could. God, Mark--” he pauses, looks at Mark.  
  
Mark is still watching the shape of Eduardo’s mouth, has been doing so pretty continuously since lunch, even though watching other people eat salad isn’t necessarily very attractive. Eduardo’s brow creases.  
  
“Why are you staring at my mouth?”  
  
“I’m not staring at your mouth.”  
  
Eduardo raises an eyebrow, and it’s achingly familiar, it’s his traditional are you fucking kidding me here Mark look. “Yes, you are. You’ve been _doing_ it, except I couldn’t figure out what was going on at first.” He bites his lip, and watches as Mark’s eyes follow the motion. “There! See? You just did it again.”  
  
“It’s not--” Mark looks up at the sound of Eduardo’s chair dragging against the wood. He’s pulling himself closer, like they’re back at the goddamned communal table, except this is an apartment and there is _plenty of personal space_. “You’re sitting very close to me.”  
  
“Because you are _ridiculous_ ,” Eduardo says. “And we never talked about this kind of thing even when we should have-- Mark, we had the chance to, once, and I totally blew past it, that was all me. But it was the same in the other direction too, and then there was Sean and California and fucking _Facebook_ , okay, and I never knew what to do.”  
  
“So once you found out I was going on vacation you used it as an excuse to start talking to me again?”  
  
“It’s stupid,” Eduardo says, in the same sort of tone one might say ‘your face is stupid’. “I don’t know. Nostalgia and stupidity are probably pretty close together. And-- I did miss you. I hated you for such a long time, and then one day, it just-- went away. It started seeming insignificant, which isn’t-- god, it’s ridiculous when I say it, right? It all seemed like such a big deal back then, but now it’s been seven years, you take off on the Fourth of July, and being civil with each other at dotcom events stopped being enough to satisfy the part of me that was-- that was best friends with you.”  
  
Mark sits up a little bit straighter, ankles neatly crossed. “I like you talking to me,” he says. “And I _was_ looking at your mouth.”  
  
“This is the worst pick-up line ever,” Eduardo says, “but I’m going to put it out there: there’s more you can do than just look at my mouth.”  
  
Maybe it’s a good thing that they are sitting so very close together, because it is ridiculously easy for Mark to lean in those few inches and press his lips to Eduardo’s. Eduardo’s lips are cool, soft, and his mouth opens easily when Mark wraps his hand around the back of his head, the other dropping to Eduardo’s waist. It’s-- it’s exploratory, questioning, good but tentative, and Mark presses a little harder, tries to make it deeper. It already means enough, and though he hadn’t realized it, he’s been _waiting_.  
  
He’d thought about this is college. He wasn’t repressed or anything, had thought about kissing Eduardo when it was late and they were studying. He’d thought about how easy it would be, and how hard it could be, and he’d never done it.  
  
To be fair, he’d also pictured Eduardo, mouth pink and wet and wrapped around his dick, when he was in the shower jacking off, which is not something Mark is necessarily going to tell anyone unless the next five minutes go _extraordinarily_ well.  
  
“Mark.” Eduardo pulls back and his mouth is like Mark had pictured seven years ago. “Stop thinking.”  
  
“I’m not,” Mark says, which is complete and total bullshit, but there you go. “I mean, I’m thinking about you. And college. And why we didn’t kiss in college.”  
  
“I came close to it,” Eduardo says. “There was this one time-- you probably don’t remember.”  
  
Mark twists his leg around Eduardo’s; their ankles touch. “Try me.”  
  
“It was one of those late night study sessions and I made you stop to watch the sunrise,” Eduardo says. “I wanted to go up to the roof, but you didn’t want to put on shoes. I think that was when I first realized that I _wanted_ you, you know? Even though you, frankly, needed a shower and had no idea about appropriate winter footwear. I wanted to push you down on top of all the econ textbooks and make out with you.”  
  
“Fuck the winter, I’m stronger than hail and a cold wind,” Mark says immediately. Eduardo laughs. “And I would have totally let you-- but on top of the econ texts? That’s dirty, Wardo, that is not an appropriate use of school materials.”  
  
“Pent up frustration,” Eduardo says. “Which, speaking of, come here, asshole.” He pulls Mark to him again and seals their lips together. It’s warm and sloppy and searching, and Eduardo’s hand is dancing around the hem of Mark’s t-shirt, which he totally approves of. It’s like, this is what kissing should be like, someone pressed up against you because you can’t touch each other enough, hands and mouths all over. Someone he finds himself sucking and nipping along Eduardo’s jaw, then at the sensitive spot under his ear-- Eduardo hisses and his hips buck up; Mark feels a thrill dart up his spine, _he did that_ \-- and Eduardo is trying to pull him out of his shirt.  
  
“Couch,” Mark gasps, and they both try to stand up at the same time and tumble to the floor. “Ow.” And then they both burst out laughing because they are tangled on the floor, and there’s a sharp pain where he banged his elbow, and Eduardo like, hit his _face_ on Mark’s shoulder and there’s going to be a bruise on his cheekbone, how did this even happen, and Mark laughs even harder.  
  
“Okay,” says Eduardo, giggling like a maniac, “this is a clear sign that you should take off your shirt.”  
  
Mark rolls his eyes and pulls it off, then begins attacking Eduardo’s button down-- fucking buttons, they are a ludicrous. He says as much and Eduardo starts giggling even harder until he’s practically choking.  
  
“This is even better than it would have been that night,” Mark murmurs abruptly, pulling Wardo’s shirt from his shoulders. The sun spills across them, turning Eduardo’s skin golden and Mark’s blindingly white.  
  
“This is good,” Eduardo says. “We’re not done talking, but this is good.”  
  
Mark mutters something that is most likely talking later, sex now, or maybe that’s just where his brain is, because they’re kissing again and kind of crawling over to the rug, and he’s going to end up with rug burn on his knees and elbows and not care; he’ll wear it like a badge of pride: _I got the guy._  
  
  
“Stop thinking,” Eduardo says, climbing on top of his, pressing his shoulder down. Mark’s arms come up automatically to wrap around Wardo’s back, and he says “okay,” and it really, finally, is.  
  
 **eleven. --- (new york, new york, united states, july sixteenth)**  
  
Mark wakes up in a bed that is not his own, which isn’t unfamiliar to him at this point. But it’s significantly softer than any of the motel beds, and there’s a warm body next to him, strange limbs flung over his torso.  
  
Eduardo leans over to kiss him sleepily, and grimaces. “God, you have the worst morning breath,” he says, sticking his tongue out and making a face. “Ugh, did you even brush your teeth last night?”  
  
“This is why morning sex is illogical,” Mark says, and then kind of wishes he hadn’t, because morning sex would be awesome, and he’s comfortable, and getting up away from the warmth to brush his teeth is seriously unappealing. Then again, so is a mouth that tastes like old socks.  
  
“I don’t know,” Eduardo says, eyeing him speculatively. “I bet we could make it work.” He slides a hand down Mark’s chest, teasing and slow. “I’m not totally opposed.”  
  
A pause.  
  
“Just don’t breathe on me--” and Mark hits him with a pillow, and then neither of them speak for quite a while.  
  
 **twelve. --- (brooklyn, new york, united states, july sixteenth)**  
  
For his second day in New York, Eduardo takes Mark to the beach.  
  
They get into a splash fight, standing ankle-deep in the Atlantic, and when Eduardo kisses him, he tastes like salt and sun and the promise of something good.

 


End file.
